A farmer, in addition to running an agricultural farm, provides agritourism services. He owns a single-family house where the upper floor has five guest rooms with bathrooms available for rent to people coming for a short vacation or weekend stays. The farmer offers agritourism services to tourists within his farm, which include room rentals and meals. The farmer is not registered as an active VAT taxpayer either for the agricultural farm (he has the status of a flat-rate farmer) or for the business activity, i.e., agritourism services (he benefits from the subjective exemption under Article 113(1) of the VAT Act). Until now, the farmer has advertised his agritourism services online. He now plans to also use foreign booking portals.
Does the farmer need to register as an EU VAT taxpayer and submit VAT-9M declarations for the periods in which service importation occurs if he uses booking portals based in EU countries?
Agritourism activities do not fall under the definition of agricultural activities as per Article 2(15) of the VAT Act, nor do they constitute agricultural services as per Article 2(21) of the VAT Act. Consequently, they cannot be classified under the VAT Act as agricultural activities conducted by a flat-rate farmer (Article 2(19) of the VAT Act) benefiting from VAT exemption based on Article 43(1)(3) of the VAT Act. Therefore, the farmer correctly classifies agritourism services as business activities under the VAT Act. From the presented facts, it is clear that the farmer (concerning the business activity of agritourism services) benefits from the subjective exemption based on Article 113(1) of the VAT Act. According to this provision, the sale made by taxpayers whose total sales value did not exceed 200,000 PLN in the previous tax year is exempt from tax. The sales value does not include the tax amount. According to Article 2(22) of the VAT Act, sales are understood as the paid delivery of goods and paid provision of services within the country, export of goods, and intra-Community supply of goods.
The core issue in this case is determining the VAT obligations of the farmer if he uses booking portals based in EU countries.
Source: podatki.gazetaprawna.pl
Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.
